Case Study

Personality

Militarism and Separatism

This refers to the pursuit of political goals/independent Irish
republic through the use of physical force. Ireland by end of the 18th century
had a long constitutional tradition which had little to do with separatism or
Republicanism. The Irish, the Old English, and the Patriots of the Grattanite
period had pursued their aims through debate rather than by arms for centuries
in a parliamentary tradition that stretched back to the 13th century. However,
by the 1790s Catholic political organisations had been outlawed and the Irish
parliament abolished. Constitutionalism in Ireland had already been under threat
from the French Revolution. With the subsequent 1798 Rising, the United
Irishmen’s nationalist aim of separating the two kingdoms by force
became clear.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood was founded in Dublin
on St Patrick’s Day 1858 by James Stephens with the ultimate aim of achieving
an Irish Republic by physical force. Much needed funds were provided by John
O’Mahony who at the same time founded the Fenians in New York.
Although the American and Irish organisations were separate, the entire republican
movement was popularly known as the Fenians. The Irish organisation
was initially called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, but this
was eventually changed to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Until
such time as a Republic was achieved the Fenians were to recognise the Supreme
Council of the IRB as the Provisional Government of Ireland. Among themselves
the members referred to it as ‘The Society’, ‘The Organisation’
or ‘The Brotherhood’.

Stephens organised the IRB along the lines of a secret, oath-bound
society, which perpetuated the ideals of the United Irishmen. He divided
the organisation into Centres; under each Centre who was known as ‘A’
there were nine captains (Bs); each captain had nine sergeants (Cs) and under
each sergeant nine privates or Ds. Each member of the IRB had to swear an oath,
of which there were several versions, one of which went:

‘I (name) in the presence of Almighty God, do solemnly
swear allegiance to the Irish Republic now virtually established; and that
I will do my utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence
and integrity; and finally, that I will yield implicit obedience in all things,
not contrary to the laws of God, to the commands of my superior officer. So
help me God. Amen’.

The IRB quickly incurred the hostility of the Catholic Church
and was denounced by the hierarchy in 1863. Two years later it was condemned
by the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Paul Cullen, and after the rising of 1867,
Pope Pius IX denounced it. Nonetheless, it gathered support among the lower
orders of clergy. Its newspaper the Irish People appeared in 1863 until
it was suppressed in 1865. Three years later it was replaced by the Flag
of Ireland, which was suppressed in 1874. At the beginning of 1865 Stephens
calculated that the movement was 85,000 men strong and when the American Civil
War ended in April of that year he asserted that the Fenians would act before
the end of the year. However the government had been keeping a close eye on
American soldiers moving between the two countries since the beginning of the
war and was well informed by spies such as Pierce Nagle. The offices of the
Irish People were raided and leaders including O’Leary, Luby
and Kickham were arrested. However what the authorities dud not know was that
the secret military council of the Fenians, including Colonel Kelly and John
Devoy was still at large and determined to strike before the end of the year.
Kelly and Devoy organised the escape of Stephens from Richmond prison on the
25th of November. The leadership failed to convince Stephens of the merits of
a rebellion and he remained in hiding in Dublin for nearly three months before
he finally decided to depart for to America.

In January 1867 Colonel Kelly set up his headquarters not in
Dublin but in London where habeas corpus [writ requiring the appearance
in court of a detained person] had not been suspended. Initially the plan was
to start guerrilla warfare in Ireland and the date was set for 11 February.
The arms dump at Chester Castle was to be raided and these arms rushed from
Holyhead to Ireland. An informer, John Corydon passed on this information to
the police. As a result the raid and subsequent rising had to be called off.
News of the postponement did not reach Kerry where minor skirmishes took place.
A new rising date was set for 4 March . On this occasion the weather proved
quite severe and there were heavy snowstorms. Although Corydon had kept the
police well informed they were poorly prepared for any rising. The outbreaks
in Dublin, Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and Waterford, were nevertheless, easily
suppressed. The only American help came after the rising when a ship to become
known as Erin’s Hope carrying 5000 rifles, 1½ million
rounds of munitions and three cannons arrived in Sligo Bay in May 1867. There
was nobody there to take the arms and though it scoured the Irish coast, it
had in the end no option but to return to America. For their role in suppressing
the Rising, the police force became known as the Royal Irish Constabulary.

In September 1867 Colonel Kelly was arrested in Manchester.
Thirty Fenians attacked the unescorted prison van in an attempt to rescue Colonel
Kelly. Police sergeant, Charles Brett, was killed during the raid. Kelly escaped
but five men were put on trial and three men, William Philip Allen, Michael
Larkin and Michael O’Brien, who became known as the ‘Manchester
Martyrs’ were hanged on the 24 November 1867. This was the first time
since the execution of Robert Emmet in 1803 that Irishmen were put to death
for nationalist activity. 60,000 people attended the public funeral in Dublin.
The executions alienated the Irish public and helped to increase recruitment
into the IRB. In December of that year an attempt to rescue Richard O'Sullivan
Burke and the prisoner Casey resulted in an explosion at Clerkenwell House of
Detention, London.. A cask of gunpowder was fired close to the wall of the prison,
at 3.45p.m on December 13, 1867. The prison authorities had, however, received
some information, and the prisoners had been exercised in the morning instead
of the afternoon. Nevertheless, the resulting explosion saw 12 people killed
and 126 injured. The Fenian, Micahel Barrett, who had been in Glasgow at the
time of the explosion, was later tried and executed on 26 May 1868. The rising
and its aftermath caused widespread concern in England and drew Gladstone’s
attention to Irish affairs.

The IRB survived the failure of the rising, despite internal
division, which existed over whether it was best to hit at England in Ireland
or in Canada. The dispute was only resolved after a succession of failed interventions
in Canada in 1866, 1867 and 1871. On 20 June 1867 the Irish-Amecian republican
organisation, Clan na Gael (sometimes called the United Brotherhood),
was founded in New York by Jerome J. Collns. Recognising the Supreme Council
of the IRB as the government of the Irish Republic 'virtually established' it
too was a secret and oath-bound organisation. It attracted many of the important
IRB men who were force to flee to America, including Jeremiah O'Donvan Rossa
and John Devoy. The Clan financed a bombing campaign in England in the 1880s
which served to alienate some British support for Irish reform.

In 1869 the Supreme Council of the IRB drafted a constitution
for the Irish Republic. Irish political activity was directed steadily in the
1870s towards Home Rule and the resolution of the land question, and during
this period reorganisation began within the IRB. Leaders such as O’Donovan
Rossa and Devoy were released and the new constitution stated that all members
had to swear an oath undertaking to do their utmost to establish an independent
Ireland, to be faithful to the Supreme Council and to obey their superior officers
and the constitution of the IRB. Soldiers of the IRB were termed the Irish Republican
Army.

The IRB in 1873 gave tacit conditional support to Isaac Butt’s
programme to achieve that end, but withdrew its support for constitutionalism
in 1876. Fenians who remained members of the Irish Parliamentary Party were
expelled from the Supreme Council. There was now a divergence within the IRB
itself and the Fenian movement particularly in America, between those who would
work with the constitutional approach and those who would not. Devoy was reluctant
to abandon his arrangement with Parnell until it clearly proved fruitless, while
Rossa was committed to physical force. With the prospects for revolutionary
activity poor, many Fenians were attracted to the Land League of which
Parnell was president from 1879. Such was the strength of the Parnellite movement
at the time that the revolutionary movement was overshadowed. Many IRB memebrs
were either expelled or had left the organisation. Official sources estimated
that membership had fallen from 11,000 to around 8,000.

The IRB still had considerable influence as it adopted a policy
of infiltrating nationalist organisations from the foundation of the Gaelic
Athletic Association in 1884 onwards. During the 1890s it engaged in a
bitter struggle with the Irish National Alliance, a splinter of Clann
na Gael, that had a military wing, the Irish National Brotherhood.
The battle between these two republican movements was fought out, for the most
part in the columns of various republican newspapers from 1895 until the turn
of the century when it ended in victory for the IRB, then led by Fred Allan.

The IRB recovered support in 1898 when it took a leading role
in commemorating the centenary of the United Irishmen Rising of 1798.
The nationalist political leader, John Redmond, shared a common platform with
Allan, Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne and James Connolly, and posing Dublin Castle
with the challenge of deciding who and who was not a member of the IRB. Certainly
the IRB was losing to open organisations such as Griffith’s Cumann
na Gaedheal and the Dungannon Clubs, founded by Bulmer Hobson;
these two organisations formed the basis for Sinn Féin. Like many young
men of his generation, Arthur Griffith was an ardent admirer of Parnell. He
considered Parnell’s fall to be a national humiliation, and sought ways
of concentrating the force of public opinion on self-determination.

The revival of the IRB which occurred after 1904 was due to
young men such as Hobson, Denis McCullough and Seán MacDiarmada, all
three of them working in Belfast. They were inspired in 1907 with the arrival
in Ireland of Thomas Clarke, a committed revolutionary who had spent 15 years
in English jails, from New York as an envoy from John Devoy. By 1912 the RIC
had assured Dublin Castle that there was a revival of the IRB but the Castle
authorities did not take the warning too seriously. In fact, the numerical strength
of the IRB was at this stage about 1,660 members in Ireland and 367 in Great
Britain. Further momentum was given to the IRB in 1910 with the journal Irish
Freedom.

November 1913 saw the South’s answer to the Ulster
Volunteer Force in the form of the Irish Volunteers, ostensibly
under the control of the respected academic, Eoin Mac Neill. In an article in
An Claidheamh Soluis, Mac Neill suggested that southern nationalists
should from a volunteer movement on the lines of the Ulster Volunteer Force.
He was then approached by Bulmar Hobson of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
who organised a public meeting at the Rotunda where the new force was established.
It attracted followers of Sinn Féin, the Gaelic Athletic Association
and the Gaelic League as well as members of the IRB who envisaged
a future role for the new force. By August 1914 membership was around 80,000
and funds were collected through John Devoy and Clan na Gael in the
USA and Sir Roger Casement and Alice Stopford Green in England. In July 1914
Darrell Figgis and Robert Erskine Childers arranged for the purchase of guns
in Germany. The guns were taken to Howth by Childers in his yacht the Asgard,
and arrived on 26 July 1914. Volunteers and members of Na Fianna Eireann
collected the 900 rifles and 29,000 rounds of ammunition. The successful landing
was in emulation of the Larne Gun Running of April 1914.

There were now two armed volunteer armies in the country. John
Redmond in order to ensure control of the Volunteers lest they would prevent
the passage of the Third Home Rule Bill demanded half of the seats on the Provisional
Committee. As the alternative was to split the movement, the movement relented
in June much to the anger of extremists in the IRB. In September when Home Rule
was suspended with the outbreak of World War I, membership numbered 180,000.
The British government rejected an offer by the Volunteers to defend Ireland
as a military force. Redmond called on the Volunteers to support Britain in
the war against Germany and his call was answered by a majority of the Volunteers
known as the National Volunteers, leaving some 11,000 Irish Volunteers
who opposed involvement in the war. This minority reorganised in October 1914.
Mac Neill became Chief of Staff, Hobson, Quartermaster and the O’Rahilly
Director of Arms. Three key posts were in the hands of the IRB: Pádraig
Pearse was Director of Military Organisation, Joseph Plunkett was Director of
Military organisation and Thomas MacDonagh was Director of Training. All three
later became members of the secret IRB Military Council which organised under
the influence of Thomas J. Clarke, the Easter Rising of 1916.